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He advanced into the country of the Oreitae through the passes and quickly brought it
all into submission.1
These Oreitae have the same customs as the Indians in other respects, but have one practice
which is strange and quite unbelievable.
[2]
The bodies of the
dead are carried out by their relatives, who strip themselves naked and carry spears. They
place the bodies in the thickets which exist in the country and remove the clothing from them,
leaving them to be the prey of wild beasts. They divide up the clothing of the dead, sacrifice
to the heroes of the nether world, and give a banquet to their friends.2
[3]

Next Alexander advanced into
Cedrosia, marching near the sea, and encountered a people unfriendly and utterly brutish.3
[4]
Those who dwelt here let the nails of their fingers and toes
grow from birth to old age. They also let their hair remain matted like felt. Their colour is
burned black by the heat of the sun, and they clothe themselves in the skins of beasts.
[5]
They subsist by eating the flesh of stranded whales. They
build up the walls of their houses from . . .4 and construct roofs with whale's ribs, which furnish them rafters
eighteen cubits in length.5 In the place of tiles, they covered
their roofs with the scales of these beasts.6
[6]

Alexander passed through this
territory with difficulty because of the shortage of provisions and entered a region which was
desert, and lacking in everything which could be used to sustain life.7 Many died of hunger. The army of the Macedonians was
disheartened, and Alexander sank into no ordinary grief and anxiety. It seemed a dreadful thing
that they who had excelled all in fighting ability and in equipment for war should perish
ingloriously from lack of food in a desert country.
[7]
He
determined, therefore, to send out swift messengers into Parthyaea and Drangine and Areia and
the other areas bordering on the desert, ordering these to bring quickly to the gates of
Carmania racing camels and other animals trained to carry burdens, loading them with food and
other necessities.8
[8]
These messengers hurried to the satraps of these provinces and
caused supplies to be transported in large quantities to the specified place. Alexander lost
many of his soldiers, nevertheless, first because of shortages that were not relieved, and then
at a later stage of this march, when some of the Oreitae attacked Leonnatus's division and
inflicted severe losses, after which they escaped to their own territory.9

4 Arrian's
account (Arrian. 6.23.3) states that the walls were made of
shells, but Diodorus seems to be thinking only of materials secured from whales. All of these
anecdotes probably derive from Nearchus (cp. Strabo
15.2.2).

8Curtius
9.10.17; Plut. Alexander 66.3. Arrian does not mention
this, and all of these districts are so far from Carmania that they can hardly have sent help
in time to be of any use. This tradition may be connected with the subsequent execution or
removal of the satraps of Gedrosia, Susiane, and Paraetacene as evidence for Alexander's
attempt to find scapegoats for his ill-planned march through the desert (E. Badian,
Classical Quarterly, 52 (1958), 147-150).

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